As trilobites did millions of years ago, terabytes have now landed and begun operations. Instead of pre-Jurassic oceans, the venue is the EWU department of computer science. A terabyte, at 1024 gigabytes, is a very large unit of computer storage --- enough to hold about 1613 copies of the CD-ROM version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Terabytes are just now emerging from obscurity and appearing on high-end server computers --- each with enough processing power to run small countries.

As part of the expansion of the EWU computer science department activities into new areas of advanced technology, including cyber security, the department has acquired and installed three state of the art Dell servers with terabyte-class storage capacity. These are among the first few in the Spokane metropolitan area. Using EWUís regional IP network these three servers will support dozens of new workstation computers installed on both the Cheney campus and in the Terabyte Triangle at SIRTI. Other cutting edge server features include memory measured in gigabytes, not mere megabytes, and several Intel Xeon gigahertz-plus processors per server. Even the plugs and cords are impressive. The black, rack-mounted rigs require two custom installed 220-volt outlets to operate. The whole spectacle is an impressive display of todayís computing power that makes the late model computer on department chairman Ray O. Hamelís desk look like the spare parts bin in Edisonís attic.

The first applications to operate on the new servers will be web services, directory services, and faculty and staff support. These computers will provide essentially unlimited on-line space for faculty and staff research and curriculum development projects. The servers will also provide space for power hungry and massive database programs, such as Oracle 9-i, the latest (and most resource intensive) product from leading database vendor Oracle. In months to come, the servers will support new courses and research areas being developed by eight EWU computer science faculty members this summer. These include subjects such as cryptology and the foundations of information theory, biometrics in cyber security, advanced network operations, and web systems security.